The other parties

Chairman for the Gary Johnson campaign in Pennsylvania Lou Jasikoff, right, and Chairman of the Pennsylvania Green Party Carl Romanelli talk about the presidential campaign at the office for their free bi-monthly newspaper, the Wilkes-Barre Independent Gazette.

WILKES-BARRE - Walk down South Main Street away from Public Square and you'll see, on your left, the Mitt Romney campaign office and the President Barack Obama campaign office, both decorated with cardboard cutouts of their candidates, encouraging signs and the computers, telephones and volunteers that will almost certainly help one of the campaigns win Tuesday.

Walk a little farther, past the William J. Nealon Federal Courthouse, past Mr. Pizza, until you can see the Dollar General store, and you'll see another office. This one has no cardboard cutouts, balloons or streamers. In fact, only a sign imploring passersby to "LIVE FREE - Gary Johnson 2012" and an array of bumper stickers lets you know that you've reached the closest thing in Luzerne County to a headquarters for Luzerne County Libertarians, who are trying to get people to vote for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson as president.

"In this campaign, I would not count Gary Johnson out," said Lou Jasikoff, of Factoryville in Wyoming County. "The major media wants to count him out, but all bets are off. He was a very successful businessman. Look at his record, it's stellar, it's absolutely stellar."

Jasikoff is very excited about his candidate, a former Republican. Give him a minute, and he'll talk to you for an hour about why you should cast your vote for Johnson. He is a believer in the newest national standard-bearer for the Libertarian Party. Jasikoff is the director of Johnson's campaign in Pennsylvania and in the last few months, he has driven Johnson around the East Coast, hitting up states between New Hampshire, Virginia and Ohio, trying to turn his enthusiasm into votes.

The office at 253 S. Main St. isn't an official campaign office, but "The Political Emporium." It houses the office for the Wilkes-Barre Independent Gazette, a newspaper Jasikoff publishes. It is also a shop for an array of bumper stickers and T-shirts espousing Libertarian values, as well as flowers and Christmas wreaths, and it serves as a place where voters can find literature about a variety of political causes.

Pennsylvania Green Party state chairman Carl Romanelli is responsible for the campaign literature supporting Jill Stein, the Green Party's candidate for president.

When Pennsylvanians step into the voting booth Tuesday, they'll see Johnson and Stein's names next to Obama, the Democratic incumbent, and Romney, the Republican challenger. Those candidates are four choices voters in Pennsylvania will have when they decide who they want to be president, as well as write-ins, according to the Pennsylvania's Department of State. Another candidate, Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party, started collecting signatures, but dropped out of the race after fears that his party would have to pay legal fees from the challenge, according to media reports. Another candidate, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, is not on the ballot in Pennsylvania.

The Republican and Democratic parties need 2,000 signatures to have valid candidates for statewide office, said Ron Ruman, a spokesman for the Department of State. Other parties need 2 percent of the largest vote total of the last statewide office, Ruman said. For this year's election, that was 20,661 signatures.

The signatures that were intended to make Johnson a valid candidate in Pennsylvania were challenged in court by representatives from the Republican party of Pennsylvania, Ruman said, but the Commonwealth Court ruled in October that Johnson's campaign had enough valid signatures for him to continue.

Stein's candidacy was not challenged in court, but Romanelli himself was challenged in 2006 when he ran for U.S. Senate as a Green Party candidate. A legal challenge from the Democratic Party took him off the ballot and left him with about $80,000 in legal fees, which he said he does not intend to pay.

Commiserating

"It just kind of happened" that these two political activists share Northeastern Pennsylvania as a home, Romanelli said. Living so close to each other means the two political activists know each other well.

Even though they don't share all the same political ideas, Jasikoff and Romanelli said they can commiserate with each other, mostly because they are in the same political situation. They have to collect lots of signatures, and those signatures have been challenged in court. They are part of political parties to which most people don't belong, but they think their parties have proved their legitimacy and they want their candidates to be able to participate in the most-widely viewed debates. As it is, they'll have to settle for debates broadcast by media such as C-SPAN and Russia Today America.

In fact, the Constitution, Green and Libertarians parties in Pennsylvania are co-plaintiffs in a lawsuit against several state officials, arguing that state law forces their parties to assume the financial risk of losing a lawsuit challenging the signatures they have to submit to get on the ballot. The three minor parties say the law violates their first and 14th Amendment rights. A similar challenge brought by the same plaintiffs was thrown out by a judge in 2010.

What's next?

Excited as Jasikoff and Romanelli might be for their respective candidates, it's very unlikely they'll win. A poll conducted by G. Terry Madonna, a political science professor from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, predicts Obama will win the state, Romney will be about 4 percentage points behind and "Other" will take home only 3 percent of the vote.

A more realistic prize for those parties is 2 percent of the state-wide vote. That makes ballot qualification easier, Ruman said, because their candidates would only need 2,000 signatures to be on the next ballot instead of 2 percent of the largest vote total of the last election. That rule is the same for other elected positions, Ruman said, such as the several state positions for which Libertarians are fielding candidates, including one local, Betsy Summers, of Wilkes-Barre. Summers is running for auditor general and previously ran an unsuccessful campaign for Wilkes-Barre mayor.

"We're not deluding ourselves. He's not going to win," Jasikoff said of Johnson's chances. "The percentage changes everything."

The 2 percent state-wide vote would make ballot access easier for those parties, and 5 percent of the nationwide vote would allow a party to receive public funding from the Federal Election Commission. Romanelli said the Green party's goals are the same: A large enough portion of the nation's votes that will grow the party's presence and funding. He's less optimistic about his candidate's chances now that the presidential race appears closer than it was in the summer. As the race tightens, people start to "play the lesser of two evils game," he said, and as the recent jump in political television ads hints, Pennsylvania is looking more like a race that will be closely contested.

For now, the parties' goals are less ambitious than winning the presidency. The successful defense of the signatures needed to get on the ballot is a victory that will make that hurdle easier for the next candidate, Jasikoff said.

What happens if one of their candidates wins more than the tiny percentage they're expected to garner? As third-party candidates, it's easy to complain and offer ambitious policies from outside the center of power, but what if a third-party congressman, senator or governor should get elected?

Romanelli acknowledged that his party would have to make some compromises, befitting the nature of politics, but said it could still keep its ideals.

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Jasikoff said. "It's a problem we're willing to have."

bwellock@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2051

@CVBillW

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